A lover whose thoughts grow over her beloved like vines round a tree, until she asks for him, not her thoughts of him.
How Barrett Browning's courtship and the sonnet tradition shape the poem, and how its extended metaphor and Petrarchan form work.
How to use the lesson's key quotations in an essay, with a short worked paragraph.
Key quotations: 'I think of thee!', 'my thoughts do twine and bud', 'as wild vines, about a tree', 'the straggling green which hides the wood', 'Yet, O my palm-tree, be it understood', 'Renew thy presence; as a strong tree should', 'Rustle thy boughs and set thy trunk all bare', 'burst, shattered, everywhere', 'in this deep joy to see and hear thee', 'I do not think of thee—I am too near thee'.
Form: a Petrarchan sonnet of an octave and a sestet rhyming ABBAABBA CDCDCD; the extended metaphor of the vines and the palm tree, exclamations and commands, and the paradox of the last line.
Context: Sonnets from the Portuguese, written in about 1845 to 1846 during her secret courtship with Robert Browning and published in 1850; her father, who disinherited her when she married; the title from Browning's name for her; and the love sonnet that goes back to Petrarch.
Compares well with: Dusting the Phone on longing for an absent lover; Origin Story and Cousin Kate on love; I Shall Return as another sonnet of longing.
